No more sardanas on Radio Reus!

Here‘s an unusual combination of nationalist hyper-paranoia with the “everything was better under Franco” meme. The programme had already been shunted back to the middle of the night because no one was listening to it, so I guess Salas got out while the going was good.

Racist cartoon in El Mundo

Interesting news here that the German state of Rheinland-Pfalz/Rhineland-Palatinate has recognised the Sinti and Roma as a national minority and committed itself to promote and protect their language and culture, particularly in education. Meanwhile, in Spain racial stigmatisation of a type not seen in Britain since the 60s remains acceptable, and not just in the…

Silly pome

Luis d’Antin van Rooten in Mots d’Heures: Gousses, Rames: Chacun Gille Houer ne taupe de hile Tôt-fait, j’appelle au boiteur Chaque fêle dans un broc est-ce crosne? Un Gille qu’aime tant berline à fetard. Annotations (under Spoof Spelling.

Credit cards, our salvation

In line with Popbitch‘s punderful headline, “Does my bomb look big in this?”, the irrepressible Bina Shah has concluded that the only sensible riposte to the disasters afflicting us is to go shopping. She also compares the US to a giant cockroach. I think it’s less Kafka than kompliment, and that she’d have joined the…

Some C17th sextalk

Nice little example of the reverse of the h/j swap that you get in some southern dialects (eg “Tengo jambre”), as spotted in Hartza’s comment here:

Are gypsies kinky?

Silmarillion’s got a post over at Après moi, la déluge about tinkers and Jenisch and … quinquis. Here the following perfectly reasonable explanation of “kinky” is given: Kink, nautical term, from Du. kink “twist in a rope” (also found in Fr. and Swed.), probably related to O.N. kika “to bend at the knee” (see kick).…

Pigeon pie

If the sentence “Volunteers must not engage in any other activities whatsoever” does actually mean a cessation of drug dealing, beatings and other criminal activity, then the IRA have scored today’s big news. However there are still plenty of bad people in the world. Pedalling along this afternoon, on my way to see hear fellow-biker…

Ethnic tagging

The nationalist mayor of Guecho in the Basque Country, Iñaki Zarraoa, wants to introduce badges for Basque speakers, he says to enable them to figure whether their conversation partner is capable of speaking with them in Basque. This would be somewhat less disturbing if an estimated 200,000 people hadn’t been driven into exile in the…

Drought

As prices soar, Ayesha Christie’s got a handy 10-point cultural history of olive oil. Things are tough here: the first blackberries were dessicated horrors, deciduous trees are losing their leaves like it’s November, and Boo Peep has had all her sheep carted off to the knacker’s since there’s nothing left for them to eat. One…

Pigeon poo, II

Of course it is the fault of those damn Muslims: The Marchenero is one of the oldest pouter breeds, and it is a breed that was developed in Spain in a period of time covering almost on thousand years. In order to understand the beginnings or ancient history, a brief history lesson is in order.…